


burn this

by ygrittebardots



Category: Black Sails
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Canon-Typical Violence, Male Character of Color, Period-Typical Racism, Racist Language, Slavery, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 15:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15052544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrittebardots/pseuds/ygrittebardots
Summary: When I take something from a man, I don’t hide behind anything. I look him in his eye and I give him every chance to deny me.How Charles Vane stole his name, his freedom, and his life.Or, the black Charles Vane fic.





	burn this

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be adding tags with each chapter. 
> 
> This whole mess started with an (albeit small) list of the things Black Sails could have done better, chief among them casting a black man as Charles Vane. Then I made this: http://ygrittebardots.tumblr.com/post/175193396797/these-men-who-brought-me-here-today-do-not-fear
> 
> Then I wrote this.

 

Charles is born on an unremarkable morning on an unremarkable island to an unremarkable woman. Later, if asked about the particulars of any of these things - not that anyone ever has - he’ll have no dates or names to give. Vague memories of a wide, dark, warm face he inexplicably knows is _Mama_ , but Charles is barely three when he’s thrown in as an additional sign of goodwill to a parcel of slaves sold to another sugarcane plantation on Eleuthera, and for all he knows she could be ten minutes or half an ocean away. 

Plantation life is punishing, even for the children set to tasks requiring smaller, more nimble bodies. His earliest memories are of the constant stinging cuts on his hands and fingers from digging up the insidious sharp weeds and roots that threaten the stalks. 

It’s a scant handful of years later that the hurricane arrives. A lifetime spent in the Caribbean Islands, most of it at sea, gives way to more than a fair share of hurricanes, but for Charles this will always be the definitive one. It’s the one that changed things. With a nearly destroyed operation and orders to fill before the season is out, the respectable plantation owner does the unthinkable, engaging the buccaneers turned lumberers that make their home deep in the jungle. 

Albinus and his men are paid handsomely in both coin and trade for the lumber that will reconstruct the plantation.

He’s big for his age even then, always has been. He’s got promise, Master Wallace says. He’ll be a strong, able buck soon enough.

He isn’t surprised that the buccaneers accept him as part of the payment deal.

Charles doesn’t really become Charles until then. Whoever his mother had been, no one in the group he had arrived at the plantation with had known her or what she might have called him. For the years spent there, _Boy_ had sufficed, but at the lumber mill he’s one of a half dozen. 

He takes it from the dead boy whose corner of the cabin he claims. Scratched into the wooden post, he figures it’s as good a name as any. 

If any of the others who had known the corner’s previous occupant take note, they mark it as coincidence. Or perhaps simply choose not to be on the receiving end of Charles’ glare, remarkable for a child of no more than seven.

Thirteen is a dangerous age. Strong and broad enough already to wear chains from dusk to dawn, lest he get any ideas, all the while chopping, stripping, sawing. Yet still young and pliant enough that Charles soon becomes used to the taskmaster fetching him to Albinus’ cabin in the dead of night.

He tries to fight back, the first time, but a thirteen year old boy is no match for a pair of fully-grown men, no matter how big he is for his age. The two hold him down, and afterwards they’re each given a turn with him. The second time, Albinus punches him square in the jaw before he even thinks about protesting.

Charles isn’t the only one. There are a few others around his age frequently missing at night. These are the nights when he can actually get some fucking sleep.

He doesn’t make any attempt to befriend those boys. One of the stranger aspects of life at the mill is that, while the masters here look like masters elsewhere - wilder, certainly, but all white men look more or less the same to Charles - so do the slaves. He can count on one hand the number of his own people he’s seen since being brought here, and even if trust were a virtue he’d ever had the luxury of developing, it would crumble to sand in this place, the tales of old women burning his ears.

_Get close enough to a white devil, he’ll eat your soul._

Fucking superstition, but still. Nothing in his life so far seems to directly say they _won’t_. He keeps to himself, mainly.

There’s a boy that changes things. Seventeen, skinny and tall like the weeds he used to pull, a bruised cheekbone and pale pale eyes - it’s not kindness, not really, but one night when he crawls into his bedroll, sore and aching and angry, he feels the light _thump_ of something hard being thrown at him.

“The fuck do you want?” he snarls, throwing the blanket back off, ready for a scrap, only to look down and realize that it’s a stale roll of bread.

The stupid fuck grins at him. 

“You missed dinner.”

After that they don’t become friends exactly, but it’s a camaraderie born of moments of need. The boy’s name is Paul, and he’s good with his hands, slipping them into pockets and crannies where they don’t belong, more often than not sharing his spoils between them. Some salted meat, a foul-smelling medicinal paste when Charles finds himself on the wrong end of the taskmaster’s whip, even a nearly-drunk bottle of rum swiped from a passed-out drunkard.

Subtlety was never Charles’ gift, he’s better with his fists. 

Charles isn’t stupid enough not to know this is why Paul sought him out. He would have survived a few missed meals, but the number of boys seeking to take out their frustration on Paul, an easy target on his own, has shrunk significantly since Charles began returning the favor back on them.

Paul laughs when he mentions it. “That’s not it, really.”

“No? 

“No. I won’t deny it’s been a pleasant change, and I thank you for it. It’s just. I was you, before. Then I grew up.”

He thinks he knows what he means by that but doesn’t continue the conversation. Not until a year’s passed and Paul returns one evening with a dagger hidden tight inside the string holding up his trousers. Charles takes one look at it and grins. 

It happens quickly. Paul is deft and small enough to slip out after Charles and the man sent to fetch him to Albinus that night without anyone noticing. He’s still chained wrist to wrist, but he can feel from the slight prickling on the back of his neck that Paul’s not far behind. 

He’s still chained wrist to wrist when the man stops him halfway down the forest path, hand on his shoulder to push him to his knees, and Charles knows what’s coming, what should be coming, only this time before the man knows what’s happened Charles has him spun around, chain choked around his throat, opening a clear target for Paul.

Only the element of surprise wears off quickly and the man’s knocked the dagger from Paul’s hand before Charles can regain control of the situation. Almost instinctively he pulls his fists in tight to his chest, the weight of the chains that link them bearing down on the buccaneer’s throat. His hands scrabble at the chain digging into his windpipe, and Charles nearly lets go when the man pushes back, dropping the full weight of his grown body onto his half-grown one. Paul drops to the ground with them and pins the man’s hands to his sides until, at last, he goes limp.

Gasping for breath, muscles seizing urgently, Charles slowly lets go.

“I know that one,” Paul says after, looking down at the dead man as Charles fumbles with the manacles’ keys. “Vane, or something.”

It’s a good name. He won’t be needing it anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to my lovely beta urcadelimabean.


End file.
